


Awry

by getoffmyhead



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Career Ending Injuries, Established Relationship, M/M, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 19:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmyhead/pseuds/getoffmyhead
Summary: Zhenya snapped. It was a fact of life. He snapped at teammates and refs and rivals alike. There was only one person he never snapped at. Until he did.





	Awry

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing something for months, convinced I would eventually perfect it and make it my first work on this site. But it doesn't want to be perfected and I'm tired of lurking. So, hi fandom. Nice to meet you. :)

Normally, Zhenya didn’t mind hearing about himself in the media. People would talk, they would criticize, and most of the time they would be wrong. It didn’t bother him. This time was different. His name was all over late-night sports commentary, and this time the pundits weren’t wrong. They were criticizing him mercilessly, and he had no rebuttal.

Zhenya had been short-tempered since late January, since a slew-foot during a chippy game in Nashville left him aching. He’d had thirty goals before that hit, on track for another monstrous season, but the collision had jarred something loose in his knee. It never pulled its weight again after that. He felt unsteady on the ice nearly all the time, slow and weak. Without his goals, the Penguins practically stopped scoring for a month. 

They fell out of the second wild card slot in March. Zhenya broke three sticks during that game. The last one hit a ref in the arm when it split in half and got him ejected, spitting fury at everyone on the ice as he went. Analysts started calling for his head then, begging player safety to suspend him. 

“It’s not just players you have to worry about out there,” Ray Ferraro said on NHL Tonight after the game. “It’s the refs, too. And you can’t just have a loose cannon like that running around hurting people.”

The ref was fine. Zhenya made sure to check afterwards, sheepishly apologizing at the door of the refs’ locker room. The guy waved it off and laughed and even gave him a Busch Light, so he knew all was forgiven. Still, he probably should have taken it as a sign and evaluated his behavior sooner. Maybe if he hadn’t been so readily excused, it would have been better. Maybe he could have reigned it in. 

He snapped at Kessel on the bench during a game a week later, but people were pretty used to that. Kessel just rolled his eyes and shook his head. He didn’t even look over. “I don’t speak Russian, man,” he said, the usual response when he didn’t have time for Zhenya’s temper. He’d already given up on the season, and it made Zhenya even angrier. He told Kessel to go fuck himself in Russian and didn’t speak to him again the rest of the night. 

The game after that, he got in Tanger’s face after a goal. If his knee had been healthy, he would have been able to stop Seguin’s breakaway, but all he could do was watch when the puck got turned over in the neutral zone. The defenders were caught completely off guard. Tanger didn’t have the legs to catch Seguin flying down the middle of the ice and he easily flicked it in past Murray. 

When Zhenya crashed into Tanger on the bench and yelled at him, he was immediately shut down with a cool, raised eyebrow. “You want to talk about who should cover the center, Geno?”

It hurt, to have his poor performance laid bare like that. It stung. The pain made him furious. Sully had to come down to pull him away from tearing into Tanger. He wadded up a handful of Zhenya’s jersey in his hand and yanked him up, man-handled him down to the end of the bench.

“Sit down,” Sully barked in what the Wilkes-Barre guys called his dad voice. “Cool off.”

Zhenya nodded, cowed. He’d never heard that voice on Sully before, laced with furious disappointment. Later, when the team went out, he bought a round of beers and shots for Tanger and Kessel. They drank with him, though they each in turn asked what was going on with him. He avoided their questions with shrugs and sly smiles and managed to keep anyone from seeing him limping. 

For the most part, everyone had been able to excuse his rage. Zhenya snapped. It was a fact of life. He snapped at teammates and refs and rivals alike. There was only one person he never snapped at. Sid and Geno were a team, a unit, for sixteen years. They didn’t fight. They didn’t yell. Geno would never treat him like he treated everyone else. Sid was special. 

Which was why everyone was so shocked when Zhenya blew up at him. 

It wasn’t even his biggest outburst of the season. Not by a longshot. They were playing Seattle, scoreless going into the third. Sid worked his way down the bench, nudged Jake over, and settled in with Zhenya. Zhenya had just come off, was still panting, and Sid leaned into him. “Hey, so I think I see where your line is weak. You’re coming off the blue line and immediately pitching it off to one of your wingers. I think if you carry it down, work through them instead and keep the puck a little longer, it’ll throw them off.”

Zhenya had clenched his jaw at the advice. He knew. He already fucking knew that was the problem, but he couldn’t do what Sid wanted. His knee would buckle if he tried. 

“That’ll give them time to set up, maybe put one in.”

“Maybe you don’t know everything,” Zhenya snarled, glaring out at the ice. 

He knew from the stunned silence beside him that he’d fucked up. Somehow, it only made him angrier, angry enough he stopped speaking English to let it all out, never thinking about how much Russian Sid may have picked from him over the years. 

“Maybe if you were scoring, I wouldn’t have to. You’re the best player in the world, right? So go score a fucking goal and stop telling me how to make my line work. You can tell me when your line is perfect. Until then, back off. I don’t need you.”

Sid sat back. When Zhenya dared to glance at him, he could see how many other people on the bench were staring. Sid looked gutted, frozen. He clearly had no idea how to react.

“Everything alright?” Sully asked behind them, and Sid snapped out of it. He blinked and his devastation was hidden, years of press training paying off for him.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Sid had answered, and he moved away to get back to his position on the bench before Zhenya could find the words to apologize.

Sports Center was talking about it. That’s how he knew it was bad. ESPN spent approximately one percent of their time talking about hockey, and that night it was all about Zhenya’s temper. The hosts chuckled about it, watching the video of Zhenya yelling, making big, volatile gestures with his hands while Sid looked so blindsided. They were joking about the Penguins needing marriage counseling when he turned it off. His foot was propped up on his coffee table with a huge ice pack on his knee. 

When Zhenya checked his phone, he had six new texts. None were from Sid. He hadn’t heard from Sid at all. After the game, Sid had changed quickly and ducked out of the locker room. He hadn’t reappeared. His car had still been in the parking garage when Zhenya left for the night. He had been home for three hours without a word from Sid, and at this point he figured that word wasn’t coming. At 1:30 in the morning, Sid was certainly asleep. 

Zhenya texted anyway, so he’d know when he woke up.

_I’m sorry._

**********

The bedroom door creaked at 2. Soft, bare feet padded in. Zhenya didn’t turn. His heart pounded as Sid shuffled around getting clothes off and the bed dipped. Sid scooted in close and wrapped an arm around Zhenya, hand resting over his heart.

Zhenya lay there, scared to speak, until Sid said, “I missed you.”

“I miss you, too. So much,” Zhenya said in a rush. He reached to grasp onto Sid’s hand, to keep him close. “I’m so sorry I yell. I’m... sorry.”

Sid buried his face in Zhenya’s shoulder and sniffed. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t sound okay.”

“It’s not that you yelled, G. You just seem unhappy. Generally. With me.”

“No! Sid, no. It’s nothing... It’s not you.”

“But it’s something.”

Zhenya hesitated. He didn’t want to talk about it. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it all season. Talking made it real. Talking made it something he was going to have to deal with. 

“G, please,” Sid rasped, and he sounded so afraid. “I really need you to tell me what’s going on.”

“I, uh...” Zhenya started, grasping for words. “I think I’m retire.”

Sid went still behind him. “What?”

“My knee... I’m needing another surgery. Scar tissue, arthritis... The old surgery not good anymore. I need again.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to retire.”

Zhenya tried to shrug, tried to brush it off like he didn’t care. But he did care. He cared so much it closed his throat. “Need nine months rehab. After that, maybe is strong enough for skate, but probably not hockey. Not NHL hockey. Just pick-up. Beer league.”

“Fuck that,” Sid said reflexively, rejecting the idea. “We’ll get a second opinion.”

“I did,” Zhenya admitted. “I go to Green Bay. Talk to best surgeon. He say, maybe I can play, but maybe if I break again, nobody can fix.”

“When? You went Green Bay? You’ve been here all season.”

“All-Star Game. You go. I don’t go. Have whole three days to visit doctor.”

“You said you wanted a break,” Sid said, sounding a little wounded. “To rest up for the playoffs.” 

Sid had been so pleased that they had both been picked. They hadn’t been to the All-Star Game together since they were young, way before they were together. He had been understandably upset with Zhenya’s choice to step down, not to go. The team had been pretty upset by that, too, since they wound up paying the fine.

In the end, everyone had pretty much accepted that Zhenya needed the break, and considering his points streak, nobody wanted to do anything to mess with his game. Sid had given him a lingering kiss the day he left and offered a reluctantly understanding smile. He never knew Zhenya didn’t leave the airport after he dropped Sid off, that he sat in long-term parking with a cup of coffee until Sid’s plane had departed and then retrieved his own travel bag from the floorboards of the back seat, where he had tucked it away unnoticed. Sid never knew Zhenya locked his car and boarded a plane just a couple of hours after Sid took off.

“I’m sorry to lie,” Zhenya said, and he was. He was so sorry. All he wanted in that hotel in Green Bay was to call Sid and talk to him about what he was feeling. But Sid had been sending him terrible selfies from the skills competition in Montreal, and Flower sent a picture of Sid laughing across the dinner table afterwards. Zhenya couldn’t ruin that. “Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad. I’m a little worried about what it means that you couldn’t tell me, but I’m not mad.”

“I just don’t want you to worry. It’s right after I get hit and I think... I just go and doctor tells me, it’s okay. We can fix. But they don’t. They say instead... Maybe I have to stop right now.”

Sid’s arm tightened around him. “And you didn’t think you could talk to me about that?”

“I don’t know how,” Zhenya said in a rush. “I just want things to be normal, like always. I stop playing hockey, what’s next? Go back to Moscow? I like it here. Pittsburgh is my home. I have lots friend here, my house. You.” He tacked it on at the end like Sid wasn’t his biggest reason to stay. “I’m just not sure how this goes.”

“Well, you’re for sure not losing me,” Sid said with a smirk in his tone like he thought the idea was funny.

Zhenya sniffed and looked back over his shoulder to gauge Sid’s expression. Surprised hope lifted his heart, something small and budding, but definitely something good. 

“Geno, is that what you thought? Did you think this was a hockey thing?”

“I don’t really know,” he admitted softly. 

Sid pushed and pulled on him, mindful of his knee, until they were facing each other on the pillow. He leaned in and kissed him. “I don’t care if you never play again, if you quit tomorrow. If you retire and go to Moscow... Well, I probably know enough Russian to get around there. I can come see you in the offseason.”

Zhenya wiped at his eyes. “People might ask why, if I’m stay in Pittsburgh,” he said, hinting. 

Sid’s hand came up to touch his cheek. “Are you worried we’ll get outed?”

“No. I don’t care about that.”

“Is it something you want?”

Zhenya looked through his lashes sheepishly and shrugged. “Maybe you don’t want if you still play.”

Sid ran a thumb across Zhenya’s cheek with a contemplative expression. “I don’t want to, like, have a press conference about it,” he said softly. “But at the same time, it’s a really big deal to me. I want to date. I don’t want to lie about why we’re out somewhere, why we’re moving in together.”

Zhenya’s eyebrows shot up and he grinned reflexively. 

“Down the road,” Sid ameliorated. 

“Or not. I move in with you, you take care of me. Feed me, bring me ice for knee.”

Sid chuckled and leaned in to kiss him. “Point is, I have plans. I’ve had plans for a while. I kinda thought you were on board.”

“Now, I am,” Zhenya assured. “I hope. Before. Hope you like me, not just hockey.”

“Of course I do. I love you.”

Zhenya’s throat tightened up again. “I love you, Sid. I’m sorry I’m being ass hole. I’m freaking out, little bit.”

Sid scanned his face with an earnest expression of affection. “We’ll figure it out together, okay? You’re not alone in this. If you want to stay in hockey, we will figure out how to make that happen. If you need to stop… Well, nothing’s changing between us. You still have me. No matter what. You’re my future, with or without hockey. So I really need you to be here and not keep things from me.”

“No, I won’t. I promise.”

Sid smiled at that, tight and still a little teary. “We’ll be okay,” he said in a voice strained but satisfied, like he was assuring himself as much as Zhenya. 

Zhenya could feel the tension in him breaking apart with relief and exhaustion flooding into the cracks. Lots of people over the years had tried to convince Zhenya that there was life outside of hockey. There was a great deal of irony in the fact that Sid, the man who lived at the practice rink, was the first one to manage it.

“You think you can sleep?” Sid asked hopefully. 

Zhenya smirked and nodded. He was a champion sleeper. He could sleep anytime, through anything. 

“We can take the option on skate tomorrow, talk some more.”

Zhenya’s good humor fell away and he groaned. 

“I know, I know,” Sid laughed. “But I think it’s important to go over things. Make decisions. Figure out how we’re moving forward, so we’re on the same page.”

Sid was looking a little nervous again, so Zhenya kissed him. “Sure. We can talk. Make plan for whole rest of life.”

“Hey, you knew what you were getting into, here,” Sid said with a self-deprecating tone and a little shrug. 

It was true. Sid had a list for every important thing in his life. He even kept a list of books he wanted to read. Of course he would want a list for Zhenya’s retirement and their relationship. Zhenya knew exactly the English word to use in this situation, the one Neal had applied exclusively to Sid during his list-making stages. “Nerd.”

Sid pushed at him with a laugh, but the push wasn’t forceful enough to actually get away. Zhenya grabbed him closer and tangled their legs together. He settled with his head on Sid’s chest. 

“You know you can’t sleep like this,” Sid teased him after a second, fingers combing through Zhenya’s hair. “You’ll get hot.”

He knew. Sid ran too warm to cuddle for an entire night. He would wake up sweating in the sheets. He just wanted to enjoy it for a couple more minutes, listening to Sid’s heart beat under his ear.


End file.
